


a cold and broken hallelujah

by thirteenohtwo



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: I have a lot of feelings okay, not many of them are good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 18:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19481812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteenohtwo/pseuds/thirteenohtwo
Summary: The doors slam shut.post ep. 69





	a cold and broken hallelujah

Jester’s eyes are the last she sees.

She can’t feel the flames licking up the sides of her arms, can’t feel the heat that boils in her veins past the raging inferno of her own heart. Fire is nothing. It can’t touch her. _Pain_ is nothing. She can’t feel it.

She can’t feel it.

She can’t feel.

Not the handle of her blade, warping under the grip of her fingers, even as she jams it into Nott’s shoulder. Not the cracking in her jaw when little green hands pull a crinkled blue flower from greasy hair and place it on the bloodsoaked greatsword. She doesn’t feel it.

(she screams so loud it blocks out the laughter, the echoing, whispering, horrifying laughter…)

The look of shock and pain on Fjord’s face - how warm his blood is against her skin, she can’t. She won’t. She will. He barks out a sharp yelp, knocking away her second swing until it barely gleams off his ribs.

_(I heard you! Fjord, I heard you. I’m so sorry.)_

The words trickle from her lips like blood trickles from his, dark and weak and so very quiet. “I heard you…”

She carves through her friends, through her family, through the people who care about her. The only people she has left. The anchors to her life. To herself. She carves through them like a warm knife through butter, she carves through them without a second thought. Without a first thought.

Without thought.

Why does she need to think?

She only needs to carve.

There’s no one left to think about. Life will take them all away, _people_ will take them all away. People are corrupt. People are arrogant, they think they know best, they think they’re right, they think, they think, they think.

They fall.

They bleed.

They die.

“Yasha,” Jester gasps desperately. The room comes back. The fire comes back and the laughter comes back. The screaming comes back. Jester angles away from her, holding her arm against her torn up ribs. Amethyst cracks, threatens to shatter. “Snap out of it,” she begs…

And runs.

They all run.

(She can’t run.

She can’t.

She won’t.

She will.)

Her stomach flips and her heart seizes, and she watches Fjord’s eyes roll back. Watches as his body slumps and he falls. Watches his hand slam out against the stone wall, nails digging into the grooves of stone, until he’s back up straight. Still clutched by a chuckling nightmare, a mouthed monstrosity, a lost child, a brother.

(No. No. No. That’s not her family, her family is running ~~from her,~~ her family is dying ~~because of her~~.)

Sparks dance where she drags the blade of her sword against the floor. Beau skids to a stop just behind her friend, behind the man who drowned twice. Pulled from the ocean once by a dark, menacing power, and once by the family he never dared to want. Beau wrestles his weak arms over her shoulders, it’s enough to jostle his fading consciousness. Yasha bears down in a jog and those eyes, those patient eyes of his find hers.

Fear clutches at her heart, a cold, skeletal grip that squeezes relentlessly. His, hers… it doesn’t matter.

And Beau digs in, the muscles of her arms flexing painfully as she pulls and drags her best friend from the clutches of a pre-Calamity horror. Yasha raises her sword, knows exactly where to bring it down, where to inflict the most damage.

That grotesque hand of fingers and a mouth slips. One of Fjord’s buckles snaps open, his armour dislodged, and the two of them jerk forward.

It’s all Beau needs, just two feet of freedom and she’s gone. He’s gone.

They’re both gone.

Until they’re not.

Until Beau is right there in front of the Laughing Hand. Until his powerful, menacing form is dwarfing her. Until Yasha breathes deeply but still she’s suffocating, still her ribs ache, still her soul screams.

Caleb pulls his hands apart and Beau grows. And grows. And grows. She’s as big as the Laughing Hand, powerful and strong, but still so very quick. He reaches, Yasha reaches, they reach but nobody touches Beau. She’s the hardest to hit, the hardest to touch, and some small part of Yasha revels in this. A seed of pride, a whispered prayer of thanks.

(Where would she be right now if Zuala was harder to hit? Harder to touch? Would she even know this family? Would she be the harbinger of pain and grief and blood that she is?)

Idly, absently, so very far away from it all, Yasha watches a giant Beau wiggle through the door. The grip on her sword slackens, the instinctual urge to raise her hand back towards the blue one reaching for her… Jester doesn’t even notice the blood dripping down into her eyes.

Yasha feels the cool chill of tiefling blood on her fingers.

Her charge falters, just enough…

_Just enough…_

The doors slam shut.


End file.
